The Rabbit Hunter: Part 1 The Battle of Greece

The New Zealand Division arrives in Greece in late March 1941, part of a three division British Commonwealth force, sent in an attempt to dissuade the Germans from invading. Hitler’s fascist ally, Mussolini, has failed to subdue Greece; the Italian army is bogged down on the Albanian border. Hitler cannot wait - the clock is already secretly ticking down to Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of his erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union.
 
Greece, the troublesome thorn in Hitler’s side in the Balkans, is besieged by 12 German divisions, these quickly sweep aside the army of neutral neighbour, Yugoslavia, and the inadequate Allied force facing them. The Greek nation sues for peace to spare the civilian population, causing the British force to scramble for the evacuation beaches.
 
The book follows the fictional Second Lieutenant Neil Rankin’s platoon of citizen soldiers from the South Island of New Zealand, as they dodge and fight their way from the slopes of Mount Olympus south over the Corinth Canal to the port of Monemvasia in the Peloponnese. They learn the bitter lessons and cost of war as they go, their fate becoming the reader's paramount concern in this fast-paced yet convincing debut novel.